# Local Development (https://depot.dev/docs/container-builds/how-to-guides/local-development)

## Why use Depot for local development?

Using Depot's remote builders for local development allows you to get faster Docker image builds with the entire Docker layer cache instantly available across builds. The cache is shared across your entire team who has access to a given Depot project, allowing you to reuse build results and cache across your entire team for faster local development. Additionally, routing the image build to remote builders frees your local machine's CPU and memory resources.

### Cache sharing with local builds

There is nothing additional you need to configure to share your build cache across your team for local builds. If your team members can access the Depot project, they will automatically share the same build cache. So, if you build an image locally, your team members can reuse the layers you built in their own builds.

## How to use Depot for local development

To leverage Depot locally, [install the `depot` CLI tool](/docs/cli/installation) and [configure your Depot project](/docs/container-builds/quickstart#creating-a-project), if you haven't already.

With those two things complete, you can then login to Depot via the CLI:

```bash
depot login
```

Once you're logged in, you can configure Depot inside of your git repository by running the `init` command:

```bash
depot init
```

The `init` command writes a `depot.json` file to the root of your repository with the Depot project ID that you selected. Alternatively, you can skip the `init` command if you'd like and use the `--project` flag on the `build` command to specify the project ID.

You can run a build with Depot locally by running the [`build` command](/docs/cli/reference/container-builds#depot-build):

```bash
depot build -t my-image:latest .
```

By default, Depot won't return you the built image locally. Instead, the built image and the layers produced will remain in the build cache. However, if you'd like to download the image locally, for instance, so you can `docker run` it, you can specify the `--load` flag:

```bash
depot build -t my-image:latest --load .
```

### Using `docker build`

You can also run a build with Depot locally via the `docker build` or `docker buildx build` commands. To do so, you'll need to run `depot configure-docker` to configure your Docker CLI to use Depot as the default builder:

```bash
depot configure-docker
docker build -t my-image:latest .
```

For a full guide on using Depot via your existing `docker build` of `docker compose` commands, see our [Docker integration guide](/docs/container-builds/how-to-guides/docker-build#docker-compose-build).

## For AI Agents

The full site index is at [llms.txt](https://depot.dev/llms.txt). Append `.md` to any documentation, blog, changelog, or customer URL to fetch its markdown source directly.